The War on Science

Category archives for The War on Science

The Australian regularly shows its contempt for science, scientists and the scientific method, titling an article “Respect the science and don’t call CO2 a pollutant” is more than little hypocritical. You might think from the title that the author, Ziggy Switkowski, presents some sort of scientific argument why CO2 is not a pollutant, but he…

In a news story in The Australian Christian Kerr claims: Former US vice-president turned climate crusader Al Gore has used footage of the Queensland floods from earlier this year as proof of climate change, contradicting the findings of the Gillard government’s Climate Commission. A new video posted on YouTube, narrated by Mr Gore to promote…

The Australian‘s Cut and Paste column is notorious for its dishonest quote mining, but today they went one step further into quote doctoring. Here’s the quote that they present as contradicting the Prime Minister’s quote: Julia Gillard at a press conference on Monday: The science is telling us that climate change is real. The government…

The decline in relevance of these papers is directly related to their surrender to advocacy journalism. They no longer attempt to appeal to the broad population of the cities they serve but increasingly reflect the narrow interests of those who would shut down any argument that does not accord with their prejudices. To their journalists…

On the front page of The Australian today we find the headline Summer of disaster ‘not climate change': Rajendra Pachauri. If you read the actual quotes from Pachauri in the article and not the fabricated one in the headline, you’ll find that Pachauri said something rather different: “What we can say very clearly is the…

The Australian has printed an opinion piece by Mark Hendrickx (who presents his own views on global warming in this stunning multimedia presentation alleging that comment moderation at an ABC blog demonstrated bias. I’m guessing that you are thinking that Hendrickx is complaining because he had an off-topic, inaccurate comment removed. But no, his comment…

The Australian‘s daily column called Cut and Paste should more properly be titled Quote Mining. Look at their latest effort: Re-insurers don’t seem to think that climate change is causing an escalating number of catastrophes … Peer-reviewed paper by Eric Neumayer and Fabian Barthe of London School of Economics and funded by re-insurers Munich Re…

The Australian has a daily column called Cut and Paste which should more properly be titled Quote Mining. Consider this recent effort: Heed the bureau. John Quiggin in The Australian Financial Review yesterday: Tragically, while only a few people have been silly enough to ignore the Bureau [of Meteorology]’s warnings about this cyclone, a great…

The Australian continues to express institutional contempt for science, scientists and the scientific method with a piece by Christopher Monckton Graham Readfern has already commented on some of the errors in Monckton’s piece, but there are plenty more. Cap-and-tax in Europe has been a wickedly costly fiasco. … Result: electricity prices have doubled. In the…

Imre Salusinszky in a column in the The Australian declares that global warming is dead because: last year was the coldest year since 2001. Apparently he doesn’t read The Australian which just five days earlier reported: “2010 warmest year on record”. Salusinszky’s logic is this: According to the Bureau of Meteorology, 2010 was Australia’s coldest…